The DE-OS 30 24 389 discloses a crosscutting device which can cut pieces of equal length, e.g. for manufacturing towels, from a running textile web. For this purpose, the cutting zone is stressed by clamping bars which can be lowered on the napless zones.
However, it has been proven that in an automatic operation the textile webs are often not sufficiently aligned, so that continuous realignment is required.
The DD-PS 126 280 relates to a device for aligning and crosscutting textile webs according to thread, whereby the alignment means react to thickness variations in the textile web.
The DE-GM 87 04 588 refers to a crosscutting device for textile webs with a rotating disk cutter travelling back and forth across the textile web.
The EP-A-89006 relates to a pattern-cutting machine, particularly a clothier's cutting machine, wherein several layer of the materials to be cut are stacked one on top of the other on a support table and ar cut according to the lines of the layout pattern by a so-called pinion-type cutter. Thereby, the fabric layers are stationary on the support table. The cutting tool is provided with a handle and is fastened by means of a parallelogram guide to a carriage which can travel in the longitudinal and transverse directions of the support table. During cutting, the cutting tool can be moved along the cutting lines of the pattern by means of the handle, whereby this manual cutting operation is servo-assisted by a very expensive control system. This way the clothier's cutting machine has only one operating mode, namely the servo-assisted manual mode of operation.
It has been established that the efficiency of a comparatively expensive crosscutting device could be greatly improved by adding the possibility of manual operation to the automatic operation, since frequently there are textile webs with nonlinear cutting lines which can be cut only manually.
Therefore it is the object of the invention to improve the known crosscutting device so that on the same machine it is possible to perform not only automatic operations, but also a manually guided cutting along any desired cutting lines.
This problem is solved by the characteristic feature defined in the main claim. The dependent claims contain further suitable developments and variants.
Due to the device according to the invention it become possible in the same machine either to crosscut automatically running and measured textile webs or to guide the cutting knife manually according to premarked cutting lines. Thereby, the operator can conveniently guide the disk cutter and monitor the running path of the cutter. During the automatic operation time losses are largely avoided and high working speeds are insured. During the manual operating mode it is possible to perform a precise cutting even along difficult cutting lines rich in curves, because the distance between the eye of the operator and the position of the knife is always almost constant.